Hopefully, they wouldn’t wander anywhere near the camp and the children.
Hannah rolled onto her side and freed her rifle, then pointed it at the bushes, ready to fire if the mutts came back for another round. Her compassion for their plight had evaporated, but at least she had felt compassion to start with. She wasn’t a monster. After a while, she decided she was in the clear. Just as well, she couldn’t afford to bury her little remaining ammunition into someone’s former pets.
As her heart rate lowered, and the adrenaline left her system, it lumbered her with a great deal of pain. Her ankle was a mess, not broken, but ripped wide open. Her wrist wasn’t as bloody, but it felt sprained. She needed to get back to camp so Dr Kamiyo could patch her up.
But what if she ended up like Emily? The wounds on her ankle might already have been infected by the mongrel’s bacteria-laced jaws. She might be dead in a week if her wounds turned like Emily’s had.
Can’t think about that now. Focus on what I can control. Find medicine and infection won’t be an issue.
Biting her lip, Hannah crawled over to an old oak tree and used it to climb to her feet. She tested her ankle and found that, while it hurt terribly, she could just about walk on it. She tried a few tentative steps, and bit down hard on her lip. It was gut-wrenchingly painful, but her focus and determination were enough to get her moving again.
She headed for the road.
27
HANNAH
Hannah discovered the overgrown access road cutting through the forest. When she and Ted had first entered the forest two weeks ago, they’d been trying to evade the demons and hadn’t stuck to the designated route. Now the path was a godsend, showing her precisely how to get back to the road. With her sword now threaded through a hole she’d made in the top of her rucksack, walking got a little easier, and before long she was back at the coach, reminiscing about the last time she’d been there.
Ted’s bag full of soft drinks still rested on the ground where he’d dropped them. She grabbed herself an orangeade and swigged the whole thing down in one go, not having realised how thirsty she was. Next, she limped over to the coach, and for a few minutes she took a breather on the bottom step, enjoying the peace and quiet. There was no sign of any demons, which was beyond a relief.
Once she’d caught her breath, she limped down the road toward Ted’s truck. He had told her to check in the back for something. That intrigued her now.
The truck came into view after a few minutes of limping along the side of the road. On the ground, beside the rear tyre, she found Ted’s nail gun. It had been an effective weapon when he’d used it and would also be useful for building work back at camp. She placed it inside her rucksack, pleased that her ordeal had at last started to bear fruit. She then leant over the flatbed and searched for the lockbox Ted had spoken about. It was welded against the rear of the driver’s cabin, a small, metal compartment with a padlock threaded through its latch. What was the code again? She searched her mind.
2-0-0-6
She rolled the padlock and snapped it open. Inside was a small nylon bundle that she took out and unwrapped. “Holy mother!”
The Ka-Bar was beautiful, a perfectly weighted military knife, perfect for both close-quarter killing and bushcraft. She had no idea how Ted had got the blade—a Ka-Bar was favoured by the US Navy and Marines—but it overjoyed her to receive it as a gift. Maybe Ted wasn’t heartless after all. He certainly knew how to put a smile on her face.
The euphoria wore off, and she got back on task. Now she had to focus on the larger task of finding supplies—medicine at the very least. Which direction should she go? Ted had told her to head past his truck, and that she would find a village.
So she set off in that direction, pain jolting her ankle with every step. Tomorrow, she’d be unable to walk on it, so she needed to grab whatever she could today and head back soon. It wasn’t ideal, but she was sure she could find something and head back into the forest by nightfall. Longer sorties could come later. They only needed a band-aid to buy them some time.
Heading down the road, she thought about what Vamps had told the group in recent weeks while he’d been working amongst them—that there was a massive human army in the South that would one day reclaim the country. It felt like a lie. She had seen an entire army massacred in Derby and found it impossible to imagine any other outcome. Yet, Vamps seemed to know way more than everybody else did about what was going on
Her mind turned down dark alleyways, ones where humanity was ashes blowing on the wind, and she, along with the people at the camp, were dangling over a flame and becoming ashes themselves. Was anybody else out here? Anyone at all? She tried with all her might to believe there was, and that salvation might truly lie in Portsmouth.
She heard moaning.
The noise came from the long grass at the side of the road, and it reminded her of a zombie. The smell of burning clung to the air, but she saw no fire. After what had happened with the dogs, she was ready to shoot first and ask questions later, so she raised her rifle and stepped away from the road and into the grass.
A tractor sat parked in the field, but there was no one behind the wheel. The driver’s door was ajar and a vast
